- Alleged last-minute political maneuvers prevented Brazil from securing the highest protections from international commercial trade of Brazilwood (Paubrasilia echinata) at the 2025 meeting of CITES, the global wildlife trade treaty.
- The music industry, which covets the wood to produce violin bows — costing up to $8,200 a piece — saluted French President Emmanuel Macron’s “decisive involvement” to avoid new trade restrictions.
- The French press reported that Macron personally called Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to discuss the issue, but the Brazilian Presidency denied receiving such a call.
- Found only in Brazil, Paubrasilia echinata has experienced an 84% decline over the last three generations, and now the country deems the tree critically endangered.
Just three months ago, Brazil seemed close to winning the highest level of international trade protections for the country’s symbol and namesake, the Brazilwood tree (Paubrasilia echinata).
On Nov. 26, Brazil’s delegation was in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, for the summit of CITES, the global trade convention under which 184 countries plus the European Union have agreed on rules to protect wildlife from unsustainable commerce. The Brazilians were confident that they would gain approval for their formal proposal to protect the endangered tree from all international commercial trade.
“There was massive support,” said a Brazilian delegate attending the meeting, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation. “There was a feeling that it would pass.”
Found only in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest, P. echinata’s population declined by 84% over the last three generations, and is currently down to around 10,000 adult trees, according to Brazilian environmental officials.
The species was exploited during colonial times to meet European demand for the red dye that comes from its wood and was used to color fabrics. Since the mid-18th century, the world’s music industry has prized the wood, also known as pernambuco, for its resonance, durability and flexibility for bows to play violins, cellos and other stringed instruments.
Each bow can be worth up to 7,000 euros (more than $8,200), making the wood treasured not just by those in the music business, but also by smugglers.
As the tree’s numbers dwindled, Brazil’s National Center for Flora Conservation (CNCFlora) escalated the species’ conservation status in 2024 from endangered to critically endangered.
“The Brazilwood tree is really in a critical situation,” Felipe Bernardino Guimarães, an environmental analyst with IBAMA, Brazil’s federal environmental agency, and a national expert on wood identification, told Mongabay in a 2025 interview.
To protect the tree from further harm, Brazil proposed to increase protections by adding the species to CITES Appendix I, which forbids international commercial trade, at the November 2025 CITES meeting. The meeting was the latest in a series held every two to three years to update rules for protecting wildlife from unsustainable commerce. Since 2007, Brazilwood has been listed on CITES Appendix II, which is less restrictive and allows some regulated international trade.
Countries like Argentina, Russia, India and China supported Brazil’s proposal. But other parties, including Australia, the European Union and Canada, insisted on creating a working group to iron out differences and reach a consensus.
Brazil agreed to a working group rather than seeking a vote on its Appendix I proposal. But within a week came a surprising turnaround: Brazil dropped its Appendix I proposal and instead agreed to retaining Appendix II protections for P. echinata, with additional restrictions, including a zero quota, prohibiting the trade of specimens harvested in the wild.
The events that led to Brazil’s unexpected move are not clear, but observers suggest there were diplomatic interventions at the highest levels.
The French press and sources interviewed by Mongabay suggested that French President Emmanuel Macron may have personally intervened to sway the outcome.
A member of Brazil’s delegation, who asked not to be identified, told Mongabay that Macron’s intervention led to a meeting between the Brazilian and French delegations. The two sides watered down Brazil’s initial proposal, ensuring Brazilwood would remain on Appendix II. As a compromise to Brazil’s demands, there would now begin a “zero quota for wild-harvested specimens.” The proposal was accepted unanimously at the CITES summit on Dec. 4.
The French president’s alleged intervention was celebrated by the International Pernambuco Conservatory Initiative (IPCI), an international organization that represents bow makers from around the world and is one of the strongest lobbying groups against the Appendix I listing. In a public statement, the organization saluted Macron’s “unwavering support and decisive involvement” in the case. It did not provide any details about the nature of that involvement.
The French newspaper Le Point reported that Macron, who on other occasions criticized Amazon deforestation, made a phone call on Nov. 29, 2025, to Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva specifically to persuade him against seeking increased trade protections for Brazilwood.
“Emmanuel Macron convinced President Lula to rein in IBAMA, the powerful Brazilian forest protection organization that had launched the fight against the relentless exploitation of Pernambuco,” Le Point reported. “Yes, there were abuses, but certainly not European bow makers … Brazil, therefore, agrees to withdraw its request: Pernambuco remains in Appendix II but with a strengthened annotation.”
Mongabay could not confirm the reporting by Le Point about Macron’s alleged phone call.
Macron and Lula are known to have a close relationship despite political differences over free trade between the European Union and Mercosur, an economic bloc of South American countries. In 2024, when the French leader visited Brazil, photos depicting the friendship between the two presidents sparked memes for their resemblance to a “pre-wedding photo shoot” as they appeared laughing, smiling and holding hands.
In response to a Mongabay FOIA request, Brazil’s Special Advisory Office of the President of the Republic denied there were communications from Macron to Lula to discuss the matter (see the complete response here). Mongabay also sent an email to the press office of Brazil’s Presidency. It declined to confirm or deny Macron’s phone call, but stated that the decision to keep Brazilwood on Appendix II was the result of “extensive dialogue” among the Brazilian government, CITES parties, and the productive and cultural sectors (see the complete response here).
On its website, IBAMA’s director of biodiversity and forests, Lívia Martins, said the agency’s concerns were addressed “with the establishment of a zero quota for commercial transactions involving native species.”
Mongabay contacted the Élysée Palace, including Macron’s respective counselors for national and international communications, Jonas Bayard and Jean-Noël Ladois. None responded to reporters’ questions by the time this story was published. In early December 2025, the French administration stated in a press release that “it has worked with its partners to reach a balanced compromise on the international trade in Pernambuco wood used in the manufacture of bows.”
Charlotte Nithart, president of the French environmental NGO Robin Des Bois, which advocates for stricter protections for Brazilwood, was at the CITES conference in Samarkand and heard the speculation about Macron’s diplomatic efforts to thwart Brazil’s proposal.
“To my mind, it was … a scandal,” she told Mongabay. “From a political and scientific point of view, when a country would like to protect its endemic species, the rest of the world has to follow and to support this effort.”
According to Nithart, the French music industry has been lobbying Macron since 2022, when Brazil first presented the Appendix I proposal at the CITES meeting in Panama. In June 2025, when Lula visited Paris on an official trip, the French minister of culture, Rachida Dati, tried to discuss the matter with him. According to Le Point, Lula replied that she should talk to Brazil’s environment minister.
“We knew before going to Samarkand that the French government was exerting political pressure on Brazil,” Nithart said. After Macron’s alleged intervention, she heard from a Brazilian delegate that “the Appendix I proposal was dead.”
The challenge to implement new rules
Attempts to increase trade controls over Brazilwood go back to 2007, when the tree was included in CITES Appendix II, which sets out requirements for export permits and a special license issued by IBAMA. The restriction, however, applied only to wood in the form of logs, cut wood, or sticks, exempting finished bows from any such requirements.
In 2018, a large raid led by IBAMA revealed widespread fraud among Brazilian bow makers to conceal the illegal origin of their raw material, and highlighted the need for stricter regulation. In 2022, Brazil failed in its first attempt to list P. echinata on CITES Appendix I, but succeeded in including finished bows under Appendix II restrictions.
Since then, another loophole emerged: The restrictions apply only to the exporting nation, Brazil. Bows made in other countries from wood smuggled out of Brazil are not subject to the same controls.
This rewards the illicit trafficking of Brazilwood. Indeed, passengers at airports across Brazil have been caught trying to leave the country with suitcases full of Brazilwood sticks.
“If we’re sending sticks, it’s because someone out there is receiving them,” IBAMA’s Guimarães said.
Brazil responded to continued smuggling by once again presenting the Appendix I proposal at the 2025 CITES meeting. If it had been approved, Brazilwood, whether raw or finished, would be permitted to cross borders only if there was documented proof that the wood was harvested before 2007, when the species was included in Appendix II, or with a special authorization from the country’s environmental authorities.
The Appendix I restriction would also have applied to musicians traveling with instruments made from Brazilwood, who might find their bows confiscated without proper documentation. According to IPCI, the bow makers’ association, this “not only would have condemned the profession of bow-making but also seriously hindered musical practice, the life of ensembles and orchestras worldwide.” Edwin Clément, a French bow maker and IPCI member, told Mongabay that “listing Pernambuco in Appendix I would mean the end of a civilization” and that countries like Brazil are “undermining Western culture.”
According to IPCI, about 350,000 Brazilwood trees have been planted in Brazil in the past 25 years and will be ready for bow production in around 40 years, avoiding the felling of trees in the wild. “Stocks are dwindling, but planted trees will soon reach maturity. This is a critical transition period,” IPCI said. IBAMA’s Guimarães, however, told Mongabay that the number of planted trees is unknown, and that it’s still uncertain whether the quality of the planted wood is suitable for bow production.
The United States also opposed the Appendix I listing. On behalf of nearly 90 organizations from around the world, the Trump administration submitted a document to CITES parties stating the new rules “would have a devastating effect on artisanal bow making, a trade that is already very small in size and annual output.”
After Brazil unexpectedly withdrew its proposal at the November 2025 CITES meeting, parties to the treaty agreed on keeping the species under Appendix II, but with an important modification: from March 5, 2026, none of the 185 CITES signatories will be allowed to export Brazilwood products for commercial purposes. Musicians, however, will have permission to cross borders carrying bows made from the wood.
“So it met IBAMA’s expectation, which was to ban trade,” Guimarães said. “But it left open the possibility of transporting the bows for exhibitions, to accompany musicians in orchestras, and for repairs.”
The problem, he said, is the difficulty assessing the legality of the bows transported across borders. “This will be a major challenge, because it is at customs that there will be interpretation as to whether it is a musician traveling with the bow to play or the musician taking the bow to sell it,” Guimarães said. The countries also agreed to encourage research into alternative materials, assess the quality of plantation-grown Brazilwood trees, support the protection of native Brazilwood areas, and create a system for tracking bows.
Maud Lelièvre, president of the French committee of the IUCN, the global wildlife conservation authority whose Red List categorizes Brazilwood as an endangered species, said these measures are not enough to assure Brazilwood’s survival for future generations.
“Strengthening the traceability of this wood in Appendix II remains insufficient to counter this illegal trafficking,” she said, adding that fake certificates are circulating and fueling illegal trade.
France has a long history of bow making, notably during the 18th century with the work of François Xavier Tourte. Known as the “Stradivarius of the bow,” he laid the foundations for the French school of modern bow making, still regarded today as the finest in the world.
Although traditional bow-making schools disappeared in the 1980s, the transmission of knowledge endures in the traditional way. In workshops, master archetiers, as the bow makers are known, pass on their skills to apprentices through hands-on practice and shared expertise at the workbench.
A single bow can cost up to 7,000 euros depending on its quality of the bow, according to Guimarães. “It is an industry that moves a lot of money.”
Not all musicians agree that there’s no substitute for Brazilwood. Researchers and some musician-scientists are actively exploring alternative materials, such as carbon fiber composites. Other scientists are focusing on flax fiber, which offers the advantage of being a renewable, locally sourced material whose mechanical damping characteristics are more similar to those of pernambuco.
“Claiming that classifying Pernambuco in Appendix I would mean the death of musicians’ tours is exaggerated,” Lelièvre said. “In the 1990s, piano keys were made from ivory. Since then, ivory has been placed in Appendix I of CITES. Pianists still exist.”
Banner image: Photos from Macron’s official visit to Lula in 2024 sparked memes for their resemblance to a “pre-wedding photo shoot.” Image courtesy by Ricardo Stuckert/PR.
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